


Into Dust

by QueerGirlTakeover



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerGirlTakeover/pseuds/QueerGirlTakeover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You think you'll be the one to change all that?” her mother asks. “Darling, I don't think you're going to get the chance.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into Dust

The necklace hangs from Laura's neck, the stone a glowing red eye, staring at Carmilla. It takes her half a second to realize what it is, to recognize that she is not imagining it, that this is real, and when she does-

“Where did you get that?” she asks, hardly caring about the answer. “Get it off!” She reaches for it, her fingers spark and burn and she watches Laura's face go blank, watches her slide sideways over the desk. She is still for a moment, a single, endless moment, and then she rises, something inside of her rises, takes over, possesses her, and turns Laura's body to face Carmilla.

“Hello sweetheart.” The voice is devoid of life, ice cold. Is is everything that Laura is not. “I thought it was time we had a little talk.”

“Mother,” Carmilla says. The past echoes through her, calling her, remembering the last time she saw that necklace, the last time someone wore it- she pushes the memories aside but every moment in the room with it, every time she sees it in the corner of her eye they are all brought to light. _It's happening, happening again, again, again_ , the word pounds against her, spreading ice through every part of her body, along every nerve. “What do you want, Mother?” Disgust leaks through in each word, disgust at everything her mother stands for, everything her mother does.

She takes a moment to respond, and Carmilla watches her pace across the room, each step smooth, fluid, predatory, so unlike the natural movement of the body she's inhabiting.

“You didn't come when I sent for you. I can't imagine poor William was at all unclear,” her mother says, looking over her shoulder at Carmilla. “He doesn't have the brains for,” her lip twists up, “delicacy.” She looks like Laura, she _is_ Laura in body at least, but so completely different. Eyes that once shone with life now glint with malice.

“If you're going to kill me, why don't you just come yourself?” Carmilla asks. Sometimes she thinks it might be easier, it might be worth it, sometimes she thinks that's why she challenges her mother. She can't tell if the words are bravery.

“Kill you?” her mother asks, eyebrows raised. It is unnatural, it is absolutely unlike Laura and Carmilla forces herself to look past the body, let her eyes slip out of focus so she doesn't have to see it, doesn't have to see anything. “Darling, you mustn't move too quickly. Let's just talk.” Her mother crosses to the computer, pulls out the flashdrive. “Without your little friends listening in.” Carmilla watches as her mother uses Laura's hand to crush JP into pieces, drop him to the floor like dirt to be stepped on.

“You didn't have to do that,” she says, softly. A quiet defiance.

“Yes I did,” her mother says, shaking Laura's hand to rid it of JP's remnants. “Threats to the sacrifice cannot be tolerated. One day you'll understand.”

The ice engulfs Carmilla's heart. Those same words, an utterly different time. An utterly different body. The same twisted reality, the same complete wrongness of it. A different beautiful girl turned into something inhuman, something she was never meant to be. Inside of Carmilla, a feeling breaks, reforms.

“Do you think I'm ever going to understand?” she asks. “Why you fed the only girl I've ever loved to an abomination?” She pretends she doesn't love Laura. She hopes her mother will buy it. Her mind whispers _that's why mother chose this body_. Admission hurts worse than denial though, and she does what she can to shut herself down, stave off the pain if only for another second.

“Darling, you're a practical girl,” her mother says, stepping towards her. “You'll see that everything I do, I do for the best. That silly little creature could never have loved you.”

Carmilla averts her eyes, look at the floor. The words are pulled from the past to the present, from another voice, in another body, the same necklace. A face dances across her mind. Carmilla watches her mother move another girl like a puppet. _Elle._ This is not random. Her mother knows she loves Laura. The fact rips through Carmilla like a knife.

“You, my glittering girl, are a diamond.” Fingers run along her forehead, pull her hair aside. Carmilla cannot remember how many times she dreamed of those fingers, of that body, of holding that hand. Her mother has turned Laura into a game piece, moves her around like a pawn. Carmilla resists the urge to flinch.

“All I'm hearing are excuses,” she says, “for why you let a supernatural suckfest turn you into its kitchen staff.” She cannot have anything left to lose and she has nothing to fight with but her voice, not against this.

“You think you'll be the one to change all that?” her mother asks. She leans Laura's body backward, looks at Carmilla, standing motionless. “Darling, I don't think you're going to get the chance.”

“What?” Carmilla looks up at her. As though in slow motion, she sees the stake appear in her mother's hand, the one Laura kept by her bedside ever since Will tried to kill her, the one intended as protection. She reflexively brings her hands up like she can stop it, looks down at the stake being driven through her body, like she is butter and it is a warm knife.

“Say goodbye,” her mother says.

Carmilla's body crumbles. Her mother smiles at Carmilla's shock, at her pain, at her disbelief. It is not Laura's smile, it is not Laura, and Carmilla looks through her body, through her mother's dominating presence, to somewhere inside where Laura has been crammed, shoved away so her body could be stolen, abused. She wishes she could let Laura know, wishes she had told her instead of hiding, had let herself be loved one last time. She thinks she finds Laura, thinks Laura is looking out at her. There is barely enough time for a breath, to begin the words, “I lov-” and she scatters into dust across the floor.

 

* * *

 

 “And I have no idea where Carmilla went, or when she's going to get back,” Laura says into her camera. “She left me this note, but it's not very informative.” She picks up the paper, turns it over in her fingers. _Gone to get blade_ is all it reads, and she sighs. “I'm starting to get worried, especially with all of what's going on and her mother....” Laura tries to think of a way to properly express how she's feeling. “I have no idea what to do about any of this.”

She sighs as her computer dings at her. “And apparently my video cache is full from a giant raw file from Wednesday.” She furrows her brow. “But that should just be....” she clicks on it, and the screen flickers into life.

Her face goes from concerned to horrified as she watches herself – her own body – rise like a puppet on strings from her desk.

“Hello sweetheart,” the girl on the screen says. “I thought it was time we had a little talk.”

Carmilla says, “Mother,” like this has happened before, like resignation, like she knows this trick. Like she is trying to close herself up.

Laura looses track of the words, she can only see herself, what was herself, what is and is not her. Her skin crawls, her eyes track the Dean walking around in her appropriated body, moving her arms and her legs and making her mouth form words that aren't hers. Laura doesn't recognize it, her voice is different, her mannerisms, but it is her, it is where she grew up. Then she turns and there is a stake and Carmilla –

Laura gasps, feels everything inside of her drain out and her body becomes again in an instant not her own. She wants to take it off, discard it, wants to be anywhere but here in these bones, in these muscles, anywhere but trapped where she is.

“What is it?” Perry asks, but Laura can't move, can't do anything but stare at the screen where she watched Carmilla –

She can't move, can't breathe, she can't think the words that Carmilla is gone _is gone is gone_ is turned to dust behind her. Her hands raise to lie flat on her desk and she shifts her eyes to them, agents of destruction.

“Sweetie?” Perry says, crossing the room to put a hand on Laura's shoulder. Laura pulls away involuntarily. She doesn't want to touch this body, nobody else should either. It has been taken from her, even now, even when the Dean is gone, it is not hers.

“Carmi...” Laura begins, but her voice hitches, traps itself. She watches her body write a note, give the screen a snarling grin, then remove the necklace and collapse. She gestures at the screen. “Carmill....” she tries again.

Perry reaches over her, runs the video back, watches the clip play. This time Laura hears the words Carmilla began to say.

 

* * *

 

 Laura spends a week in the shower, trying to scrub the past out from under her skin, trying to remove something that left indelible traces on her insides. She gets used to it. It takes her a month, two months, six months, to feel comfortable when she is moving her body, when she is opening her mouth. She reclaims herself slowly, but some days are good and some days are bad and some days are so hard she cannot even get out of bed, she just lays with her eyes closed and pretends that she does not exist.

The stake, picked up so carelessly from the floor, is buried under her bed. She can't keep it, it is too much, it is too many memories all at once. She can't get rid of it. She lives every day in Carmilla's grave, she sees her in every dust mote, in every crack in the wooden floor. Moving out is torture and relief. The room is sacred. The room is unholy. It was blessed by Carmilla's presence and cursed in her death. It is all Laura feels she has left of Carmilla when she was alive. Laura puts the stake in a box and leaves the box in her father's attic. Discarding it feels like forgetting, and she cannot ever pretend to forget.

Laura does not look at her hands the same way for years. Every time she touches something she feels the stake beneath her fingers, she imagines it once again being driven through Carmilla's heart. She tries not to touch beautiful things, tries not to brush against people. She feels tainted, she feels marked, she feels diseased.

She reads somewhere that it takes seven years for every cell in a human body to be replaced. Seven years afterwards, she still feels like something has been left in her brain, a darkness in a space from which she has been exiled. The date is burned into her memory like a brand, and on the seventh anniversary she shoves her way into the darkness and she comes away knowing what Carmilla's mother knew.

There is not a day Laura does not regret putting on that necklace. There is not a day she doesn't think to herself _if only if only if only_ she had not made that one stupid decision, she had not attributed to Carmilla's love something that was an act of evil. _If only if only if only if only._

Finally she lets herself be touched. She is hesitant to touch, she feels the destruction beneath every movement, but she learns everything again, relearns what it is like to be with someone she loves. Her hands stop feeling like wrecking balls and become sliding glass doors. A way in, a way out. When she needs them to be, a barrier.

One night she stands under the stars, looks up at the night sky Carmilla loved. Sometimes she imagines Carmilla has become a star, watches her from above. She hears those words again. _I lov-_ and she whispers into the void, “I love you too.”

 


End file.
